Ex-minister Babatunde Fashola said he did not receive security votes when he was governor of Lagos State.

Fashola disclosed this on Friday while fielding questions in a panel session on The Platform, a public lecture organised by The Covenant Nation in Lagos.

“This security vote thing – whenever I hear some of my colleagues talk about it, I don’t know what it means because I never had it in Lagos. Well, maybe you were the governor, but I was the governor, so I speak for what I know,” he said.

“I was the governor; there was no security vote. All our acquisitions were domiciled in the Ministry of Budget and Planning. So you were saying governors received something as a security vote. I don’t know if Governor Saraki [who was part of the panel] got that kind of money. I didn’t get it, and I don’t know where they were getting it.”

“I was the governor. There was no security vote.”

According to him, security in Lagos State was funded by residents, with the people carried along regularly.

“Back in the day, we used to have a monthly security meeting. It was held every first Wednesday of the month for eight years, and I never missed that meeting,” said Fashola, who was governor between 2003 and 2015.

“When Gen. Musa [minister of defence who was on the panel] was talking about transitions and high crime, I could connect with it because we took data every month. We set up a Security Trust Fund where people invested.

“The accounts and assets were audited, and every year we came to a town hall like this. We did not just come to talk to Lagosians about what we were doing with the resources; we also told them what we were doing in terms of crime, measuring the data of specific crimes from the previous year to see what had changed in the current year.”

The ex-minister said crime is dynamic and thus requires a multi-pronged effort to win the battle.

“It wasn’t just a battle [fight against crime] won with arms and guns; it was also a battle won with policies. Crime is very “dynamic. As you win one battle, a new crime emerges. It doesn’t end. That is the unending work of all of these people who sit here. It doesn’t end until you die,” the ex-governor said. (Channels TV)

Update news